


The Final Nail

by Shideezhi



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-20
Updated: 2017-10-20
Packaged: 2019-01-20 10:21:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12430770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shideezhi/pseuds/Shideezhi
Summary: One-shot. After killing Damian Darhk, Oliver hangs up his hood and goes back to his life in Ivy Town. Without Felicity.





	The Final Nail

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this right after the end of season 4, and found it in my drafts recently. It's interesting to see where my mind was back then. I figured I might as well clean it up a little and post it, warts and all.
> 
> I was always sorry that Oliver was taken out of his peaceful happy life in Ivy Town, and basically forced to go back to the vigilante life. This is how I handled it. I think it's what is know as a fix, though it probably isn't the type of fix you would expect.
> 
> This is not exactly a happy story, which is why it's a one shot. More on that in the end notes.

It was the final nail in the coffin of their relationship, and it was hammered home by Oliver himself.  


He was having a yard sale, and appeared to be selling off the stuff they had bought together to furnish their Ivy Town home. Even the frames which had once held photos of them on their trips where for sale, apparently.

She wondered what he had done with the pictures.

Her replacement came out of the house carrying a box of miscellaneous kitchen items, which she started unpacking on one of the tables set out in the driveway. Physically, she was a lot like Felicity, only with bigger boobs. And curly chestnut hair.

Feeling sick to her stomach, Felicity shrank down in the driver's seat, afraid she might be seen.

And then he was there. She sucked in an unsteady breath, watching him as hungrily as she had the first time she had spotted him since he had left Star City.

He came out carrying a couple of sofa cushions, which he threw on the sofa, the one she had picked out herself. He was getting rid of it. If the driveway and garage was any indication, he was getting rid of most of the remnants of their life together.

The proverbial knife plunged into her heart. When Oliver moved behind his new girlfriend and slid his arms around her waist, the knife plunged again. When she tipped her head back against his shoulder and they exchanged a deep kiss, the knife twisted.

***

After defeating Damian Dhark, Oliver left the team. What was left of it, anyway. Diggle, in an effort to come to grips with what had happened with his brother, had reenlisted. Thea had hung up her bow, seemingly for good, and Oliver...He had said right from the start that he would leave once Dhark was defeated, but she never in a million years thought he'd actually go through with it.

"I've done my time, Felicity." He finished hanging his suit up on the mannequin for the last time, and turned to her with sadness in his eyes. "I want a normal life. I wanted it with you, but since that's not possible, I'll have to go it alone."

Felicity was stunned, but hid it fairly well. "You deserve it," she managed with an almost steady voice. "Where will you go?"

"Back to Ivy Town. Back to our house. You don't mind, do you? I mean it's not like you ever wanted to go back there."

"Uh, no, I don't mind." She didn't, did she? In truth, she had no idea what she felt. She was completely blindsided by the news. She had firmly believed that they would go on fighting crime together, as they had before they broke up.

"What...what about all this?" She indicated the trashed Arrow cave, with it's tens of thousands of dollars worth of equipment, with a sweep of a trembling hand.

"Whatever you can salvage is yours. Keep it, sell it, it's up to you...You paid for it, after all." He finished shoving the rest of his stuff into a duffel, zipped it up and shouldered it, turning to face her.

"I still love you, Felicity. And I still want to spend the rest of my life with you. But I'm done with this life. If you ever decide you forgive me, if you ever want to take me back, you know where to find me." He took a step toward her and pulled her into a one-armed hug.

She leaned into him, still disbelieving, and inhaled the familiar scent of him. Then he let her go, pressing a lingering kiss to her forehead, looking down at her with all the love he had for her laid out on his face and in his eyes.

His hand drifted up to her cheek, his fingers grazing her cheek so softly she barely felt it.

"Goodbye, Felicity," he whispered.

She kept her eyes on his as the doors to the elevator closed over him, and then he was gone.

She stood for a moment in the deafening silence, still in shock at this sudden turn of events, and then reached blindly behind her, feeling for her chair, before sinking slowly into it.

***

With Curtis's help, she moved whatever equipment had survived to a new location, which happened to be under Thea's new nightclub, Verdant 2.0. For a while, she monitored the city alone, calling the SCPD whenever she got notification that a crime was being committed. When it became clear that new vigilantes were operating in the city, she decided to try and unite them all into one team.

It did not work out.

First of all, there was no one to train them. On top of that, they were young, brash, undisciplined, and completely lacking in experience.

Wild Dog was the first to go. He died stupidly, after tripping over the edge of a roof while being chased, and taking a header off the building. He was killed instantly. Artemis lasted a few more months, but she too died needlessly, after going out on her own despite warnings to wait for back-up. Rory bailed when he found out about Felicity's involvement in Havenrock, so at least he was safe. Last she'd heard, he'd been offered a spot for a couple of his sculptures in an art gallery.

As for Curtis, he lived, probably because he was smart enough to realize he was completely in over his head and quit. His husband finding out about his extracurricular activities probably had something to do with it as well.

Felicity continued on alone for a while, but she really couldn't do much on her own, and whatever she did do, didn't seem to help much.

Oliver kept in touch via the occasional text. He never asked about the vigilante business, so Felicity didn't volunteer any information. He seemed happy; he was back to exchanging recipes with Laura, cooked a lot and entertained at home pretty frequently, and participated in neighborhood get-togethers and activities. He was basically living the life she had found so stifling and boring, the life he had loved, that she had forced him to abandon when she convinced him that Star City and the team needed him.

Only now, she wished she was there, living it with him. The vigilante life meant nothing to her without Oliver. She could never regret coming back to Star City to save it from Darhk, but she found she bitterly regretted not going back to Ivy Town with him.

Unfortunately, she had come to that realization too late.

***

It was six months to the day after Oliver had left the arrow cave for the last time, that Felicity decided to do a little sleuthing. She shamelessly spied on him, electronically at first. She ran facial recognition software and watched him whenever possible, piecing together his days from the images she captured of him, and essentially participating in his life from a distance. She watched him from any camera she could hack, going about his day, coming and going from stores or the farmer's market, pumping gas, getting money at ATMs, doing business in banks.

Living his life. Without her.

He seemed happy and at peace, but it was difficult to tell on camera.

When grainy images, low quality video, and satellite footage were no longer enough, Felicity decided to take a trip to Ivy Town to catch a glimpse of him in person. It took three weeks for her to talk herself into it, because seriously, that was reaching a level of stalkerish that was pretty creepy, even for her. It was also kind of pathetic. And sad.

When she couldn't stand it anymore, she packed a bag for a few days, rented a car, and headed to the motel closest to the neighborhood she used to call home. She spent the evening planning her stakeout, a thread of self-loathing running through her the whole time. She was officially a stalker.

She couldn't believe she was going to do this. Their street...well, Oliver's street now, was full of people who knew them. She could be spotted at any time. But the need to see him in the flesh outweighed everything.

Although she had prepared for her stakeout to last most of the day, the fates were kind to her. Oliver emerged from the house twenty minutes after she had parked in the shade of a tree, a couple of houses down.

Her heart stuttered. When, a few seconds later, a young woman emerged behind him, it shuddered to a halt. When Oliver turned and reached for her, letting his fingers drift down her arm before catching her hand, the way he had done with Felicity so many times, it shattered completely.

***

The sound of laughter startled her back into the present. While she had been lost in her memories, people had gathered in the driveway of their...of Oliver's house. Oliver was sitting on the sofa chatting with a woman she recognized from two houses down. The Replacement, as Felicity referred to her as, was perched on Oliver's knees, scratching a grinning dog under the chin. One of Oliver's arms stretched along the back of the sofa.  
The other hand rested lightly on her Replacement's hip.

Absolutely heartsick, Felicity started up the engine, making a u-turn to avoid driving past the house, and watched the sunny domestic scene recede in the rear-view mirror.

Back at the motel, she gave herself a couple of hours to break down. She wallowed in regret, cried, and wallowed some more. Then she pulled herself together. It was time to get on the road, and back to reality. She had been living in vigilante limbo for far too long.

As she packed, checked out, and loaded her car, she planned. First, she would take a trip to visit her mom in Vegas. A change of scenery was just what she needed to recharge her batteries, and gain some perspective. When she got back, she would talk to Curtis about an idea for a start-up that had been knocking around her head for a year now. She needed income, and a dead-end job like Tech Village was no longer an option.

Turning onto the freeway, Felicity drove into the sunset, leaving the past behind her. The rest of her life was waiting, and it was time to start living it.

**Author's Note:**

> For those who like a happy ending...of course they get back together. It's Olicity. If I were to continue this (which I'm not planning to), OF COURSE I would reunite them.
> 
> Maybe someone spotted her on the street in Ivy Town and casually mentioned it to Oliver, who then realizes that maybe it's not completely over between them, and gets in touch with her in person, leading to some heart to heart conversations, and yadda yadda bla bla bla waffle drone...


End file.
